Heritage Lottery Fund

What a triumph! Our Heritage Lottery Fund bid has gone in at last - all 80+ pages of application and supporting documents, in triplicate. We now await the response. But whatever that maybe, and despite the excessive paperwork involved in the bid, our Archive Committee have found it a worthwhile learning experience. Our own management and organisation of the George Padmore Institute archives should benefit in the future from the work we have had to put in to make this submission to the HLF.

The Cataloguing Learning Curve

We cannot provide access to the archives in the George Padmore Institute until they are sorted, preserved and catalogued. The sorting and preservation has started as was reported in the last Newsletter. We now need to move on to the cataloguing. This year has been one of research and we have recently taken the decision to purchase CALM 2000 as a suitable software programme for the cataloguing of the archives in the George Padmore Institute. The order has gone in and we are excitedly waiting this next stage in our work.

Training Policy

The aim of the George Padmore Institute is for a core of trustees and volunteers to become familiar with the professional standards required in maintaining and organising an archive. This way we will be able to continue the work whether we receive funding or not. We will also be in a position in the future to manage much more successfully and knowledgeably any professional staff that we may have to employ.

Basic Archive Skills

Janice Durham, Brian Alleyne and Sarah White attended a one-day training session on Basic Archive Skills in September of this year. The day covered preservation, archival processing, provision of access, records management, IT and record keeping, some of which was material that we had become familiar with through our work and contacts over the past few years and some of which was new. We all felt it had been a very useful day in pulling together the different basic archive skills especially as we were provided with a comprehensive handbook to take away. It is also planned for five trustees and volunteers to receive training on the new CALM software system when this is installed.

Camcorder Training

We have started training sessions with three trustees and volunteers on the use of the digital camcorder, purchased in October 2000. The idea is to train people up so that the camcorder can be used both for GPI sessions and for other events.

Burnage Inquiry

During the year the George Padmore Institute received materials collected by the team that sat on the Macdonald Inquiry Into Racism and Racial Violence in Manchester Schools following the murder of Iqbal Ahmed Ullah in the playground of the Burnage High School. Their findings were published as Murder In The Playground..
The materials collected by the Inquiry are a major addition to those materials we already hold and will be of key importance in understanding racism and anti-racist policies in the UK in particular in the light of the disturbances that occurred in the North of England over the summer period. We have started the initial cleaning and preservation of these materials in archive boxes.

Gordon Rohlehr

On April 6th 2001 the George Padmore Institute co-hosted with New Beacon Books a well-attended reception for and talk by Professor Gordon Rohlehr of the University of the West Indies, Trinidad. He has had a distinguished academic career and is the author of several major pioneering literary and cultural works and other studies including Pathfinder: Black Awakening in the Arrivants of Edward Kamau Brathwaite. He was a distinguished participant in the activities of the Caribbean Artists Movement while working on his doctoral thesis here in the UK. His talk was a brilliant comprehensive about the CAM period here in Britain and the sequel since in the Caribbean.

Life Experience With Britain - Three

The GPI is currently planning for a third series of our popular Life Experience With Britain: lectures and conversations to take place in 2002.

Publishing

Work has continued slowly but steadily on a number of projects over the past year. We are working on the editing of the seven contributions to the second series of Life Experience With Britain and these should be published in 2002.
The tapes from the Supplementary School Sessions held at the end of last year are currently being transcribed.
The GPI is also planning to publish a complete set of brochures from the 12 International Book Fairs of Radical Black and Third World Books that took place between 1982 and 1995. The book is to include accounts of the Book Fair by participants. We think it is important for those who made the Book Fair to offer their own assessments of its signficance. We are hoping this will be available in 2002 or 2003.

Educational Materials

The George Padmore Institute has long been talking about the need to prepare educational materials for schools and colleges based on the archives in its library. We have taken our first step towards achieving this important development this year. Ruel White, who is a secondary school English teacher and a longtime associate of New Beacon Books (they published his novel Heroes Through The Day in 1990) and the George Padmore Institute, is currently looking at how the material in Changing Britannia could be presented for use in schools, taking into account the very structured national curriculum requirements. We are looking forward to hearing his suggestions and ideas and to working with him in the future.

Web Site/s

Brian Alleyne and Remi Harris have been working regularly throughout the last year to develop a website for the George Padmore Institute. The initial design has been drawn up, basic information put on and links made. This preparatory material is now being worked on professionally prior to its launch, hopefully at the fundraising lunch on December 9th.
We shall also be working next year with Professor Abdul Alkalimat of the Africana Studies Department, Toledo University, USA, on the development of a joint website for the Malcolm X sessions that took place during the period of the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books. Abdul was a regular participant at the Book Fair and is also a well known expert on Malcolm X.

Building work

Some of the behind the scenes work this year has been in the maintenance of the building. Our flat roofs, above the shop and right at the top, both sprang leaks after the very heavy rain of last winter and they have had to be repaired. We are also getting the building repainted and putting up a new sign for New Beacon Books, which will include a proper sign for the George Padmore Institute too. So watch this space!

Notepaper & Bookmark

2001 has also seen the George Padmore Institute acquire after ten years (we always say we are slow builders and consolidators, rather than flash and dash) proper headed notepaper. We printed an attractive bookmark at the same time, which gives information about the work of the GPI. If people want copies just let us know.

Fundraising

For any small charity, raising money can take up a disproportionate amount of time. Most of our fundraising efforts this year have gone into completing and submitting the bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund referred to earlier. However, the George Padmore Institute obtained a further generous grant of £5000 from the Hilden Charitable Fund this year and we have also been receiving in quarterly payments the £15,000 granted by the Joseph Rowntree Trust in October 2000.
But the GPI never forgets that the basis for the achievement so far of the George Padmore Institute has been the work done and commitment shown by its members and supporters in Britain and other parts of the world. This is the rock on which our foundations have been built. We would like to pay public tribute to all these donors and supporters here, of whom there are too many to name and to thank them all for their effort and commitment.
The GPI’s Fundraising Lunch will be held on Sunday December 9th. This is where friends and supporters can meet, enjoying good food and good company in support of a good cause.

The GPI always welcomes any donations to our work. Cheques should be made out to the George Padmore Institute. Standing order forms are available if you should wish to use one.

OUTSIDE NEWS IN BRIEF

We are delighted to announce that our chairperson, John La Rose, has been included in a 2002 Black History Makers in Camden: commemorative calendar. Some of the other figures included are Beryl Gilroy, CLR James, Claudia Jones, George Padmore, David Pitt, and Paul Robeson. The calendar is very good value at £5.00 and copies are available from New Beacon Books.

We are also delighted to announce that Ian Macdonald QC, one of the GPI trustees, has recently published the latest edition of his key study and handbook Immigration Law and Practice in the United Kingdom. The book was launched in November at his publishers, Butterworths, the well-known British legal firm. It costs £130.00.

It has been a frustrating year for The Roger Sylvester Justice Campaign with still no news of a prosecution of the officers concerned in his death or of an inquest. It is now nearly three years since Roger's death in January 1999. The Campaign invited people to a private showing of the film Injustice in August. The film is produced and directed by Ken Ferro, and shows very clearly the difficulties and frustrations that families face in fighting for justice when their loved ones have been killed in police custody.

Deaths: Millicent Durham, a long time supporter of the George Padmore Institute, and mother of one of our trustees, Janice Durham, sadly died on February 12th of this year. Millie was a familiar and much loved figure to people attending George Padmore and New Beacon functions over the years. She was a fine and dedicated teacher and spent much of her retirement years energetically exploring the world.